


Character Talk - Justified

by Raven_River



Category: Justified
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Analysis, Character Study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-05-14 23:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19283605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven_River/pseuds/Raven_River
Summary: I have discovered that I enjoy writing about the characters of Justified so why not put them into one place?This isn't a story but a discussion of the characterisation of people. Thank you to everyone who wrote fanfics I read - you helped me to learn a lot about these characters and this wouldn't have happened without you - especially togina, norgbeluah, and thornfield_girl.





	1. Ava Crowder

How could one not love Ava Crowder? Not admire her steely strength, her kindness and never-failing politeness? Ava is her own woman and when we see her in Justified she isn’t going to let others treat her like dirt. She has backbone and stands up for herself.  
Ava didn’t let Bowman get the best of her in the end, he got what he deserved – shot with his own deer rifle while eating his favourite dinner. Ava hit breaking point and, oh boy, how she broke. Ava decided that she had had enough of people telling her what to do and that now she was going to do what she wanted from then on. When Raylan came knocking, she kissed him because that was something she had always wanted. She wanted Raylan so she would have him. Bo tried to scare her out of Harlan, out of Kentucky, but Ava wouldn’t go because Harlan is her home, and she will not be run out of her home.  
As the story unfolded we got to see more of Ava’s personality as she got used to her freedom and being her own person again. Ava may be hard as nails, but she is unwaveringly polite. She doesn’t let the world force her hand or even let Boyd manipulate her like many others. She comes around to his criminal ways of her own free will because she loves him – not that that stops her shooting him when the time comes.  
Ava’s house belongs to her, and her alone. The people under her roof will abide by her rules or so help them. Boyd may stay because he’s kin but if he crosses the line, she won’t hesitate to kick him out. She enjoys being herself and not belonging to someone.  
The beautiful thing about the Boyd/Ava romance is that they don’t belong to anyone, they complement each other and enhance each other’s skills and knowledge. Alone they are powerful, but together they’re unstoppable. Their undoing comes when the fool themselves into thinking that they can have a normal life in a suburb and run a Dairy Queen. Deep down they know it’ll never happen, but they let themselves hope and when they come crashing back to reality, it’s unrepairable. Maye Boyd and Ava could have made it, if they hadn’t been on a trail that was speeding towards Raylan Givens’ gun pointed at Boyd. Maybe they could have made it if Boyd had been content in the mine and Ava had stuck steadfast to her “no criminal activities” rule. Or maybe there was too much Harlan in them, too much revenge and power-lust and empire for them to do anything but fail.  
Although Boyd is really the one behind the empire, he and Ava are a team. Ava has compassion and mercy and a manner that encourages people to like her, in a way that Boyd’s allure and intensity doesn’t. Ava takes charge when Boyd is put away and although his goons don’t respect her, she makes them. Devil and Arlo don’t listen to what she has to say even though it comes straight from Boyd. Devil keeps disrespecting her and Boyd and Ava, even with her arm in a sling from being shot in the chest and her fancy dress on, wallops him in the face with a pan. Before that she tries to assert her dominance with Hot Rod Dunham when Devil and Arlo are trying to sell him the rotting weed. They are being greedy and cheeky to Hot Rod but Ava uses her charm and politeness to try and smooth things over with him because Hot Rod is a good ally to have and not someone they really want to be on bad terms with.  
When Ava takes over Audrey’s we once again see her kindness and steel all at once as she takes over from violent Delroy who she kills to save Ellen-May. However, we do see her become stricter and harsher as time goes on, as she seems to look down on the prostitutes. This hardening of Ava comes to a head when she is in prison fighting for her life. But, in the end, that’s what saves her. Not her politeness, not her kindness and not her love for Boyd. Her independent strength mingled with the hardness of prison lets her shoot Boyd in the chest, make off with nine million dollars and set up a new life for herself and her son, free from Harlan at last.  
When we see her in the epilogue we see a lighter side of Ava, when she isn’t worried about the law all the time, and she isn’t haunted by the crimes and reputation of the Crowder clan. She fought through so much to get to that place of freedom, and the happiness and comfort she deserved all along. Her ending was ragged and forged through a lot of pain but in the end it’s the best she could hope for – a child that she always wanted an a calm life with kind neighbours who have no knowledge of the horrors of Harlan.


	2. Boyd Crowder

Boyd Crowder is not an easy person to describe in a few words because of how he is constantly changing, a slippery, manipulative man who is always two steps ahead. He’s a white supremist, a Nazi, a preacher, a killer, a miner, a bar owner, a lover, a friend, a criminal, an enemy.

He’s introduced as a white supremist bank robber who shoots a rocket launcher with a gleeful “fire in the hole!” His eyes gleam with chaotic joy. His nonchalance with killing Jared Hale on the bridge just because he suspected he might be a spy and his lack of guilt even after finding out that he was innocent show a truly reckless man. The Boyd Crowder we first meet doesn’t show half of the depth that we see by the end. The very first Boyd is wild and unrestrained in a way the later, post-chest wound Boyd isn’t.

 

Boyd is rough and slightly vicious, he’s certainly far more bold and has less fear or respect for the law. He threatens Raylan _in_ the courthouse. He’s more flexible with his morals. He pushes and pushes until it all comes for a head in Ava’s dining room. For the second time in a week a Crowder is shot at the table. You can see Boyd’s shock when Raylan shoots him, he thinks Raylan is a different person that he actually is. He thinks Raylan is a Marshal but forgets that he’s also a Harlan man.

I feel that Boyd has been pretending for so long that he’s lost touch with who he really is. He needs Raylan to remind him of the real Boyd who’s buried beneath the son Bo Crowder wants. Boyd has spent so long pleasing his father and his peers, drowning in hatred, that he’s lost touch with the boy who dug coal. Raylan gives him a second chance, it really is a gift of a second chance at life, an honest chance.

 

The thing with Boyd is that he feels so deeply. He cares for his father and craves his respect and admiration. He holds on to Raylan with his dying breath. He loves Ava in a fairy-tale manner. He mourns his men who he was trying to protect, to help, and finds himself lost. Rayan is the only true person who knows Boyd inside and out, even after twenty years. Or maybe because of the twenty years. Raylan only ever knew Boyd himself and not the twisted imitation he became.

Raylan and Boyd are flip sides of the same coin; yin and yang. One cannot survive without the other. That dependence based on the remnants of a boys’ friendship creates more problems than it helps yet they can’t let it go. They are fighting and clinging right to the end. When Raylan tries to let go Boyd holds tighter and when Boyd tries to drop him, Raylan is constantly there. Right from Raylan’s visit to Boyd’s church to Raylan’s visit to Boyd’s prison, they are clutching. Boyd waits because he knows Raylan will come, in his own time.

 

Ava and Boyd meanwhile are the sort of reverse to Raylan and Winona, cursed to fail but by God will they try. Raylan and Winona know the don’t work but love each other just enough to try again and again and hope that this time it’ll stick (it doesn’t). Boyd and Ava however are a perfect match and so in love that they think they will make it. They think they can have their happy ever after and the criminal empire but they’re freewheeling down the hill heading straight towards the law. Maybe outside Harlan they could have had a pretty house and a happy marriage but then again, maybe not. Harlan lives deep inside them both.

 

I just love Boyd’s gentlemaness and the respect he has for Ava, even of it’s not what he wants. Ava is his lady and he will treat her as such. If she wants to do something then she can and no one is permitted to disrespect her in his presence. He trusts her so much and doesn’t want her to get hurt by his law breaking but Ava insists. Ava has had enough of being told what to do.

 

It’s funny when you think that Boyd is shot in the chest by the two people he loves the most. But that’s why he’s shot, because they have no other choice. Boyd pulls on Raylan, and Ava has their baby to think of. She knows that Boyd would love the baby with everything he has but that’s why she had to go. Boyd’s love can be destructive, and Ava doesn’t want that for the child. She doesn’t want Harlan for her child.

 

Boyd is constantly changing, constantly moving and that makes it difficult to tell what is actually Boyd and what is him playing to his audience. And that is why he needs Raylan, because Raylan is the only one who can tell even if Boyd himself can’t. As thenightlaw-blog put it: “ _Raylan has the greatest bullshit detector of all time. He knows Boyd believes in the things he does, but he also knows that Boyd doesn’t know how full of shit he is_.”

 

Boyd is a highly complicated character but that’s what makes him so fascinating. He has a strong moral code yet is an out and out criminal. He’s highly intelligent yet doesn’t nurture that intellect and instead uses it to run rings around drug dealers. He is part of the very essence of _Justified_ because he is an integral part of Raylan Givens’ character.


	3. ...We Dug Coal Together (Boyd and Raylan)

….We Dug Coal Together  
Raylan Givens and Boyd Crowder. Two unlikely people to compare to each other, a lawman and a criminal. They may be on the opposite sides of the law but Raylan and Boyd are very similar people underneath.   
Both of them grew up with fathers knee deep in crime who didn’t always remember to leave the violence at the door. They went to the same highschool and dug coal in the same mine. Their beginnings were almost identical so it’s no surprise when I say that their positions could easily have been reversed. If Raylan hadn’t had an Aunt Helen to give him that money he most likely would have ended up cracking knees for the Crowders like his father. If Boyd had had the chance to get out and stay out, he quite possibly have ended up in law enforcement himself, or an academic man maybe. The only difference between them is that Raylan couldn’t wait to leave while Boyd loved Harlan.   
Despite them being an outlaw and a lawman Raylan and Boyd’s morals are very similar. Every shot Raylan has fired was justified in his own mind and Boyd does likewise. Both of them walk the line between keeping and breaking the law, only tending to stray across to the opposite side to the other.   
Raylan cares greatly for those close to him and he will protect them with all he has, the law be damned. And does Boyd not do the very same thing? He threatened people who disrespect Ava, he vows to kill Dickie for what he did to her and he wanted revenge for the murder of his father. Raylan covers up for Winona “borrowing” $100,000 from the evidence room, he drags Dickie into the woods and nearly puts a bullet through his skill for murdering Aunt Helen and he chases Gary away for endangering Winona’s life. Both Raylan and Boyd have a strict moral code and God help you if you cross it.   
This similarity enhances the lingering friendship from when they were nineteen. There are certain scenes that really show just how well Boyd and Raylan enjoy each other’s company even if they don’t always get along.   
It may seem strange to say but one such scene is the end of episode one where Raylan shoots Boyd. He tells Boyd that he’s sorry and truly means it, but Boyd pulled. Raylan didn’t want to kill Boyd but his training kicked in and he did what he thought he had to to save himself and Ava.   
Another scene is the one where the Marshals are searching Boyd’s camp and Boyd himself is leaning against the slope at the edge of the hollow, handcuffed. Raylan lowers himself down onto his elbows close to Boyd and although their conversation isn’t that far out of the ordinary, the almost friendly tone is. Raylan may not approve of what Boyd does with his time but he likes him anyway.   
We once again see their companionship when Dickie Bennett has Raylan strung up. Boyd didn’t have to save him, in fact it should have been in his interest to let Dickie kill Raylan. Yet he doesn’t, Boyd makes Dickie let Raylan down before anything else. Boyd doesn’t want Raylan hurt.   
When Boyd is hauled in for questioning about the whereabouts of Mags’ money he asks Raylan how much Mags has hidden away and he replies that it’s “well over $10” to which Boyd says “well now, if I found that sort of money I’d be in Mexico by now”. The joking tone and friendly nature of the conversation shows that no matter how many times they may be on opposing sides of the law and no matter how many times Raylan might try to put him away, underneath it all the remnants of Boyd and Raylan’s friendship perseveres.   
Some may see Justified as a crime story with an antagonistic relationship in the background, but I see Justified as the story of Raylan and Boyd, with crime on the side. After all, it begins with a dead gun thug in Miami, “fire in the hole!” and Boyd bleeding out on Ava’s floor, and ends with Raylan and Boyd in a prison visiting room and the admission that they never could forget that they dug coal together.


End file.
